


One Dance With the Princess of Hell

by KairosImprimatur



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Domestic Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, F/M, Family Feels, Future Fic, Gen, Protective Lucifer, Step-Parent Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-28 13:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30140469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KairosImprimatur/pseuds/KairosImprimatur
Summary: It's really hard to be a rebellious teenager when one of your parental figures literally invented rebellion.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Trixie Espinoza, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, Trixie Espinoza & Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 30
Kudos: 137





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First Lucifer fic! Nothing epic, I just really dig the dynamic between Lucifer and Trixie and there isn't enough of the show left to answer all my questions about how it will develop as Deckerstar commits to a future together.

Chloe had been married to the Devil for three years before she heard him having an argument in earnest with her daughter. Usually they got along famously, Lucifer affecting disdain and Tris plying him with relentless affection in the pattern they had established from the start. Any family disputes usually came from Lucifer’s abiding tendency to spoil her, and were quickly resolved once Chloe interfered.

But both of them had just come in when only Lucifer was due back, and the slamming door and loud tones told a story even if the only words that Chloe could make out were Tris’s uninformative cries of “I don’t _care_!” and “He is _not!_ ”

Sighing, Chloe left her office to mediate. She was more resigned than concerned - Tris was sixteen now, after all, fiery as ever, the girl who had decided one day that she had outgrown her childhood nickname and had everyone calling her by a new one within twenty-four hours. Lucifer was Lucifer.

The two of them had stopped on either side of the stairs, so Chloe had to literally walk into the middle of the fight. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

Tris answered first. “ _Lu_ cifer is _ruining_ my _life!_ ”

“Nonsense.” Lucifer gave Chloe an imploring look. “I’ve done nothing but remove an inconvenience from her path. I’ve no idea where this display of ingratitude came from.”

Chloe raised an eyebrow, waiting for the details that would let her know which one of them was being more unreasonable. 

“I’m supposed to be _grateful?_ ” Tris retorted. “That you chased away the only guy who liked me enough to ask me out?”

There it was. Tris had just recently started dating - at least in the way that entailed more than holding hands - and Chloe knew that Lucifer would never admit to how worried it made him. She crossed her arms and rubbed her forehead. “Lucifer, do you want to explain why Tris’s date didn’t pass muster? You don’t even know the kid.”

“Well, I brought the urchin to the cinema according to plan, walked her to the entrance, and it seemed her ticket had been left in the car--”

Tris broke in. “Because _you_ took it out of my bag and put it there!”

“--And while she was retrieving it I passed the time with a bit of conversation with her would-be paramour.” He batted his eyes at Chloe, all innocence.

She nodded. “You mean you intimidated him with a barrage of questions about himself.”

“Just the one.”

No need to ask what that one was. Tris might not have understood what was happening, but even if she had, she would still be angry at him, and Chloe wasn’t entirely sure she could blame her. This was more complicated than she had thought.

“Tris, could you give me and Lucifer a moment?” she asked.

“Fine. Whatever.” The girl’s phone chimed, and she grabbed it off the counter and glanced at it before saying, “I’m going out anyway.”

Chloe took her shoulder to stop her from darting straight out the door. “Wait, with who?”

“Maze. I told her what Lucifer did and she’s here right now to pick me up, so bye.”

Lucifer took his own phone from his pocket and read something off it that made his eyes widen slightly. Chloe released her daughter and looked at the text that Lucifer had just received from Maze: _I’m getting her some ice cream and I’ll deal with you later._

The moment that Tris was gone, Lucifer strode briskly toward the kitchen, speaking and gesticulating without looking back. “Now, I admit my assignment to deliver the young lady to the theater wasn’t entirely successful, but once you hear my side of things I think we’ll be in complete agreement that I acted in her best interests.” He reached up to the highest cupboard and took out a bottle and two glasses. “You’d better steel yourself for the utterly vile core that this riffraff revealed to me when I--”

Chloe cleared her throat before cutting in. “You put the mojo on him,” she stated, leaning on the other side of the counter, “and he said he wanted to have sex with Tris.”

Lucifer froze, looking up from the drinks to meet her eyes, then gradually setting the whiskey down. “How did you…?”

“How did I know what a teenage boy would be thinking when he was on a date with a cute girl? How did you _not_ know?” She reached for one of the glasses. Lucifer seldom asked before he poured her one, but he didn’t put any expectations on it, either - if she didn’t touch hers, he would just drink both of them. Right now seemed like a good time to lay claim to one. “What did you say that scared him off so fast, anyway?”

“Didn’t have to say a word, actually. A glimpse at Hell was all the deterrent he needed.”

Chloe sputtered on the sip she had just taken. “You _Devil-faced_ him? In public?”

Lucifer had that perplexed, affronted expression that he got whenever she called him out for being egregiously inappropriate. “Nobody else saw it, Detective, I’m not an amateur you know. The more pressing question is how we’re supposed to deal with the rest of the young miscreants that the child is likely to encounter, since apparently every one of them has the same thing on his mind. Did you really know about this all along? And you’ve just been letting them off the hook?”

As much as he had changed over the years, there were always aspects of humanity he just couldn’t understand, and there probably always would be. She had to put things in his terms. “They didn’t do anything wrong. Since when do you punish people for having desires?”

“This isn’t punishment, it’s...insurance.”

“You mean protection?” Chloe softened her tone. “Lucifer, Tris growing up isn’t easy for me either. But there’s always a point where parents have to step back and let their children make their own choices. She knows what to do if a boy tries to take advantage of her. You and I and Dan and Maze have all been hammering that lesson home for a long time.”

Lucifer flicked his fingers dismissively. “That’s hardly a concern. Even I would pity the chump who incited the wrath of Maze’s prize student.”

Chloe smiled. “Then what?”

He finally picked up his own drink, taking a long pull from it with a pained expression, and let the pause go on for a few more moments before saying, “What if she makes the wrong choice?” He lifted his eyes to Chloe’s. “What if there isn’t a right choice? The way you tell it, every one of the males in her peer group is after her body for some meaningless fun, after which he’ll discard her and move on to the next temptation.”

“Mm.” It wasn’t easy to talk about this, Chloe reflected, but it was good that they were getting it out. “Sound familiar?”

She was expecting deflection, but right away Lucifer snapped to attention and exclaimed, “Aha! Yes, perfect example! You were the first woman to ever turn me down. You wouldn’t budge until I was ready to treat you with the respect you deserved. Changed my entire outlook, made me the upstanding Devil I am today! The best-played long game in Eternity!”

As accustomed to the peculiarity of their romance as she had become, she still couldn’t help laughing a little - and blushing. “So what’s your point?”

“Would you have been able to resist someone as gorgeous and charming as me when you were sixteen?”

“Are you suggesting that someone as gorgeous and charming as you actually exists?”

He snorted. “Absolutely not. Especially at a high school, thanks be to Dad. Putting an element like me in that environment would be bloody chaos.” His smirk faded as he went on, “Those angst-ridden little savages have a hard enough time resisting each other.”

Chloe let her mind drift back to her own teenage years - first kiss, first boyfriend, first heartbreak. Lucifer didn’t know how right he was. “If I could go back to the age Tris is now,” she mused aloud, “I would tell myself to wait for a guy who wanted more than sex.” She shrugged. “And I wouldn’t listen to me, because what do adults know, anyway.”

Lucifer threw back the remainder of his drink and emphatically placed the glass on the counter, leaving his fingertips splayed on its rim like a scepter. “And reasoning with your own offspring would, assuredly, be no more effective. How fortunate for her that I didn’t bother with that approach.”

“You know, I thought if you could sympathize with anything, it would be rebellion against parental figures.”

“Oh, I can.” He looked grim. “Never fear, Detective, I won’t be perpetuating that particular cycle. I’ll gladly take all the blame and vitriol the urchin can dish out.”

She sighed. “Or you could just stop scaring her boyfriends.”

“And I will. As soon as she finds one who doesn’t need scaring. Tell her to work on that, would you?” Lucifer’s glass was empty, and he sized up the bottle before apparently reconsidering and taking Chloe’s glass from her instead of refilling his own.

“Hey!” she complained as he downed it. “Are you trying to distract me by annoying me with something unrelated?”

“No.” He came around to her side of the counter and swung an arm around her waist. “I’m trying to distract you with sex. We don’t know exactly when Maze will be bringing the urchin home, and you were taking far too long with that.” As he spoke he nudged her toward the stairs. “Chop chop.”

Chloe considered refusing, but the argument wasn’t going anywhere. Everything else was still up for debate, but he was right about how to make good use of their time alone together.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh no he's back. This is SO EMBARRASSING. Try not to look at him, okay?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the comments on the first chapter! Apparently I forgot to set this fic to multi-chapter, but I've fixed that and after this one there will be at least one more. (It hasn't been written yet though, so it will take more than a day to appear.)

If it had just been that one time, Tris would have let it go. If Lucifer had ruined her date with Brody and thereafter left her alone, it would have been okay.

Brody had turned out to be a loser anyway. A few days after their botched plan, Tris found out that he had been telling everyone that they went to the movie and then he decided he didn’t want to go out with her anymore and that’s why there was no second date. 

She cornered him at his locker at the first opportunity and reminded him of the public humiliation he would face if she informed the whole school about the truth of the matter: that he had run like a squirrel after meeting her stepfather. His face went pale and he stammered an apology, and she didn’t have to speak to him again.

But then there was Tyler. Sweet, funny Tyler with his encyclopedic knowledge of every band that Tris liked. She knew better this time than to let him anywhere near Lucifer, and concocted a foolproof plan to meet him at the beach after school. They had about fifteen minutes of a wonderful time before the sun was suddenly blocked out by a massive umbrella being erected behind them. 

“There you are,” said a cheerful, all-too-familiar British voice. “Should have had one of these from the start, but judging from the paper-white tone of your companion’s skin, no real damage has been done.”

Tyler jumped and Tris whirled around, both of them spraying sand all over their blanket. Lucifer was standing over them wearing swim trunks and an offensively bright yellow tank top with a Hollywood sign image on it. Tris tore off her sunglasses. “What are you _doing_ here!?”

“Well, protecting your complexion, of course!” He turned to Tyler, who had his own sunglasses in his hand, wiping sand off of them. “One would think someone as devoid of pigment as you would be more conscious of the effects of the sun, for your own sake if not the lady’s.”

“Lucifer,” Tris snapped before Tyler could attempt a response. “This isn’t funny. Leave us alone.”

He grinned. “Very well. Just one question before I go.”

“ _No!_ Tyler, don’t answer him!”

It was too late. They had eye contact. “Tell me, Pasty Boy, what is it that you desire?”

Tris had never seen anyone look as uncomfortable as Tyler did now. He swallowed. “I just...wanna get Tris into bed. I don’t even like the beach.”

“Right.” Lucifer sighed. “No surprises there, but I’d advise rethinking your strategy. When you associate with women of substance you may find there are consequences to thinking with your tiny prick.” He stepped out of the shade of the umbrella. “I’ll just be on my way then, I have my own date to get back to.”

After a second of stunned silence, Tyler lurched to his feet without looking back at Tris. “What the hell, man?” he shouted at Lucifer. “Why are you--”

Tris could only see him from the legs down, and Lucifer was completely out of view, but something had just silently transpired between them. Before she could stand up, Tyler was sinking back down, into the shade and onto the blanket. She reached out to touch his shoulder, and he flinched. He was trembling, she realized suddenly.

Caught between pity, disappointment, and anger, Tris murmured, “Sorry about that. You want to, um, go somewhere else?” 

Tyler finally raised his eyes, but they were hard and distant. “What’s the point?” he asked. “Nothing’s going to happen now anyway.”

So Lucifer had ruined another date with another boy who apparently wasn’t worth it anyway. That didn’t make it okay. The prom was coming up, and she had been so sure that someone would ask her. Maybe not a prince charming or a soulmate, just a cute guy who would make it a night to remember. Now she was wondering whether it was better to go alone or to skip it.

Tris wasn’t giving up so easy, though. She flirted with Evan and he flirted back, until Lucifer dropped in during lunch period one day and somehow convinced a cafeteria worker to allow him to take her place long enough to ask Evan what he wanted. She invited Aiden over to show him her pet boa constrictor, and Lucifer came home unusually early and greeted her guest with questions about his desires. No matter who she had her eye on, no matter how discreet she was about it, Lucifer always seemed to be one step ahead.

Whenever she tried to talk to him about it, he fired off insults about all of the boys he had interrogated, saying their obsession with sex was proof that they were unworthy of her. She didn’t have a good comeback for that - the confessions of lust were starting to wear on her too - so she stopped talking to Lucifer altogether. 

It was hard to keep him out of her life, though, and not just because he was married to her mother. One day she joined a study group, and the first thing she heard when she walked into the room was, “Well, if it isn’t the Princess of Hell!”

Tris facepalmed as she took the chair next to Juan, the boy who had spoken. “Please don’t call me that,” she muttered.

He sounded confused but genuinely remorseful. “Oh, sorry. Everyone’s been saying it for so long, I didn’t know you didn’t like it.”

She smiled to show she wasn’t upset with him. “I was the one who started it, y’know. See, my step-dad’s name is Lucifer, and he always used to tell people he was really the Devil.” She paused. “Actually, he still does. Anyway, I figured if he’s the King of Hell…”

Juan laughed. “Yeah, totally. So why stop using it? It’s cool.”

“Because I’m trying to be a rebellious teenager, not a daddy’s girl. Do you know how hard it is to rebel when your parental figures have a diabolic theme going on? I need to find my own thing.” She frowned pensively. “Maybe angels. I bet that would piss him off real good.”

They kept joking until they were shushed for the studying to begin. Tris wrote her number in Juan’s notebook and went home feeling better than she had in a while.

Her good mood lasted until she walked in the door and Lucifer called from upstairs, “Is that you, urchin? I have a _marvelous_ new game for the Xbox, we absolutely must try the two-player mode.”

Tris rushed into her room and slid the door closed behind her. She wanted to cry. Lucifer would spend hours playing video games with her, though he never played them alone, or with anyone else. 

Mom came home an hour later, and soon was tapping gently on Tris’s door. Tris let her in, but with a caveat: “I don’t want to play Xbox, if that’s what you’re here to ask.”

“Actually, I was wondering if you wanted a driving lesson.” Mom smiled and held up her car keys. “Just you and me?”

Mom drove them to the outskirts of Los Angeles and then let Tris take over. In an empty parking lot she practiced steering in slow circles and figure 8s until Mom directed her to pull into a spot facing the ocean and turn off the car.

Sensing the melancholy in the silence, Tris asked, “Are we about to have a heart to heart?”

“If you can handle it, I could use one.” Mom sounded wry, but weary. “I hate seeing you and Lucifer fighting.”

“I know.”

“Putting up with him can be a lot, but he’s only trying to look out for you.”

“I know.” Tris drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Can’t you make him stop, though? I thought you had him wrapped around your finger.”

Mom gave her a lopsided grin. “Funny, I always thought the same about you.” She unbuckled her seatbelt to turn toward Tris. “Listen, monkey, there are some things you don’t know about Lucifer’s past, and without that, it’s hard to understand where he’s coming from. You’re getting to the point in your life where he and I can’t always give you what you need, and...I think that really scares him. Maybe even more than it scares me.”

The raw honesty in her mother’s voice gave Tris a pang of guilt. Lucifer might have been acting oblivious to her cold shoulder, but she knew she was hurting him, and she knew he meant well. He wasn't just family by virtue of his marriage to Mom. He was the glamorous grown-up whose magical ways had her convinced for years that he really was the Devil. He was the reason that Idina Menzel had given a private performance for her thirteenth birthday party. He was the one who had abandoned all wit and pretense at the news of her father’s death, and held her silently while she sobbed into his designer waistcoat all night long.

She bit her lip, then plunged into an honest confession of her own. “It’s just, I kept thinking I found the right guy. Brody, then Tyler, then Aiden...but thanks to Lucifer, they all ended so fast I don’t even know what I missed out on. And now there’s Juan…”

Mom perked up. “Juan? I didn’t hear about Juan.”

“Because it’s been like five minutes! But I think he’ll ask me to the prom if he gets a chance, but he’s probably not going to get a chance because Lucifer.” Tris clenched the wheel, her pent-up frustrations surfacing in her voice. “I know this is all just stupid high school drama, there’s more important stuff than the prom, but I--”

“Honey, no!” Mom reached out and squeezed her hand. “No, it’s not stupid at all. This is a special time in your life. You deserve to experience all of it.”

Tris squeezed back, finding a smile. “Then can you not mention Juan around Lucifer?”

“Your secret is safe with me.” Mom hesitated, then asked, “Are you not going to ask what we've been keeping from you about Lucifer’s past?”

“No way. Gross.”

Mom laughed. “Okay, apparently it can’t be any worse than whatever you’re imagining right now.”

Tris wasn’t actually imagining anything, though it was true she didn’t want to know, especially now that she was feeling better. “Good talk,” she ventured.

“Good talk,” Mom agreed warmly. “Hey, don’t sweat about the prom. Juan or no Juan, you’re going to have a great time.”

“I guess.” Tris wanted to believe her, but she didn’t know what to expect yet, or even what she should hope for. She gave her mother a long look, seeing her in another light. “Who brought you to your prom?”

Mom paused for a second, and then let out a rueful laugh. “Lucifer.”

Tris knew very well that Mom and Lucifer hadn’t known each other in high school, but she could also tell this wasn’t some kind of evasion and that it had nothing to do with Lucifer’s mysterious dark past. She sat back in her seat, smiling, and waited for the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, yes, I killed Dan. But I swear my intentions were good - if he were here he would either have to be an absentee father, which wouldn't be fair, or I would have to juggle him into the parental equation, and a story of this modest size and scope couldn't do that without taking too much of the focus off of the other characters.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of royalty, the silent treatment, and turntables.

Lucifer approved of nearly every kind of mischief that his love’s offspring got herself into, and was ready and willing to get into it with her more often than not. He knew that it wouldn’t last forever; one day her desires wouldn’t be so innocent and her mistakes wouldn’t be so harmless, but he had thought he was prepared for that. 

He was wrong. Nothing had disturbed him quite like finding out that she had been calling herself the Princess of Hell.

He didn’t think the Detective knew about it, and he didn’t want to bring it up, feeling that he wouldn’t be able to explain why it was a problem. Back when he proposed, he had admitted that marrying him would make her his lawful queen and that he couldn’t do anything about it, and she had barely batted an eye. She was never going to set foot in his infernal kingdom, she said, so why should it matter if she had a title there?

And it didn’t, at least not in any way that affected her life on Earth. But he knew and she knew that it was the truth, and she had taken it on with fully informed consent. Tris, on the other hand, had no idea that her playful boasts had any bearing in reality. Truth be told, Lucifer hadn’t been sure himself, since there wasn’t any precedent. He just didn’t think that the daughter of a queen, within celestial tradition, could be anything but a princess.

So there was only one question: If the urchin knew the truth about him, and hence herself, would she be appropriately horrified? Or would she flaunt it even more?

He couldn’t probe for insight while she wasn’t speaking to him, so he kept on with his original plan. She might think she hated him for it, but at least none of her fellow troublemakers would be corrupting her on his watch.

Unfortunately, the Detective still wasn’t cooperating with the plan. One morning, he came downstairs and greeted the women, and as usual of late, only one of them greeted him back. Tris was staring at her phone over breakfast, showing no sign that she’d seen or heard him, and the Detective didn’t even take her to task for her poor manners. 

She did, however, hand Lucifer a cup of coffee, so he kissed her temple and began whistling to fill up the silence in the room. As he tested the whiskey content in the mug, she discreetly shot him a look of compassion, a quiet reminder that her commitment to neutrality didn’t mean apathy.

“Oh!” Tris exclaimed suddenly. She scrambled out of her chair and over to her mother, gesturing at her phone. “I found it! Definitely this one!”

Lucifer furrowed his brow, but the Detective scrolled down the screen for a few seconds and said, “Okay, good...yeah that’s a decent price...great! I’ll book it!”

Tris returned to the table, beaming, and Lucifer cleared his throat. “What’s this now?”

“Her prom is this weekend, remember?” said the Detective. “She and her friends are chipping in for an SUV limo.”

If Tris had come to him with her request, he could have provided any vehicle she wanted and saved her and her friends their pocket money, and he was sure she knew that. Instead of saying so, he reached for the whiskey to correct the ratio in his coffee and smiled brightly. “Ah yes, the prom. I’m quite looking forward to it myself.”

Instantly, Tris froze and looked at him for the first time that morning, but it was the Detective who spoke. “Lucifer? Did you sign up as a chaperone without telling me?”

“What, me, spend an entire evening supervising teenagers and making smalltalk with their millennial parents? Bloody hell, no.” He could see both of them begin to relax before he clarified, “I’m the DJ.”

There was a clatter of Tris’s spoon falling into her bowl. “ _No!_ ” she yelled. “You can’t! Oh my _God,_ Lucifer, you can’t come!”

“So now you’re speaking to me,” he replied evenly. “You won’t need to during the event, if that’s your concern.”

“Mom, tell him he can’t do this!” She really did sound outraged. “He’s going to ruin everything!”

The Detective shook her head as if she too were at the end of her rope. “Lucifer, this is supposed to be a night for Tris and her friends. Making it all about you isn’t going to help.”

“Detective, you wound me. My only intentions are to ensure that the music is of a decent standard.”

Tris shoved her chair back from the table and stood up. “Yeah, because obviously I can’t enjoy myself without you making every decision for me.” She glared. “I should have known you’d have some kind of public humiliation ritual planned.”

Lucifer blocked her path before she could storm out of the kitchen, looked her in the eye, and laid his hand on her shoulder. “Child, I won’t interfere with your celebration,” he said gently. “You have my word.”

She wrenched away from him. “I don’t want your word, I want to live my own life. And I’m not a child.”

He said nothing more until she had left to catch her bus. “She’s not pleased with me,” he observed. 

The Detective was at the table on her laptop, booking the SUV limo. She didn’t look up to respond, “Your powers of perception never fail to amaze me.”

“Why are you taking her side?” Lucifer pouted. “I’m the one whose feelings are being mercilessly crushed.”

She took her hands off the keyboard and looked up at him. “You should have talked to me before you set this up. I know you have a high success rate at using dramatic gestures to apologize, but I’ve also witnessed some of your spectacular failures.” She sighed. “And I know my daughter. If you put a spotlight on her, you really will be making it worse.”

“I assure you, there will be no spotlight,” he said as he took a seat at the table. “Nobody will even know that she knows me.”

“She will. So she’ll also know who spiked the punch, or hired the Blue Man Group, or whatever it is you come up with to improve the party.”

“I won’t--” He stopped. “Hold on, do you mean to say the punch won’t already be spiked?”

The Detective rolled her eyes. “I guess you haven’t put much thought into what it’s like to spend a few hours surrounded by teenagers. This isn’t your element, Lucifer. They’re not sinners, they’re just kids.”

He wasn’t offended by the implication; after all, he did have an eternity of experience with sinners and none with kids, aside from Tris and Charlie. But something was still bothering him about the comparison, and he had to think about it before responding. 

She noticed his hesitation, as she always did, and a look of concern crossed her lovely face. “You’re not thinking they’re both, are you? I clearly remember you confirming my belief that there are no children in Hell…”

“Quite true, no funny business there.” He rubbed his chin. “As I said when you asked, it takes some maturity to learn how to be your worst self.”

“Mmhm. And I said that wasn’t totally reassuring but I’d take what I can get. So what’s eating you?”

He gave her a smile, hoping that it was at least somewhat reassuring. “Just that you were right. The urchin is growing up. We need to allow her to make her own choices.” The smile fell as his voice became graver. “I think it may be time to tell her the truth about who I am.”

“Oh.” The Detective’s eyes grew large and unfocused. “We did always say we would explain everything when she was old enough.”

He nodded. “It can’t be put off forever. At least we have some experience now in breaking the news gently.”

“Right, we’ll...ease her into it. Maybe Amenadiel will help. Angel uncle first, Devil stepfather later.” She swallowed, giving him another of those expressions of boundless empathy. “It’s going to be harder on you than her, though, isn’t it?”

“Detective.” He reached for her hand, unable to help himself. “Whatever the two of you need from me, I can handle. Even if it means staying away from her for a time.”

“I know how much it hurts you when the people you care about react that way. You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t.”

She was right, of course, but this time was different. He didn’t want Tris to accept his true face instantly; she would be better off in the long run if she began with fear. 

Instead of troubling the Detective with that thought, he brought her fingers to his lips for a kiss and some smolder. “If I’m exiled from your child’s territory, you can always come visit me in the penthouse. I’m sure I can put your pity to good use.” 

She laughed and took her hand back, only to lean forward and kiss him on the lips in exchange. “It’s a deal. We’ll come up with a strategy for getting Tris up to speed.”

“After the prom, of course. I have enough on my plate right now.”

The Detective groaned and dropped her forehead into her hand. “How did I already forget I was mad at you for that?”

Lucifer smirked. “I expect you secretly didn’t want to be mad, seeing as DJs turn you on.”

“Can you maybe follow Tris’s lead and grow up?”

Again, there was an unexpected truth behind her words. Lucifer had lived for millennia without achieving any emotional growth, without even understanding there was anything he lacked, and then a mere dozen years on Earth had reshaped him like clay in the hands of his Father. He attributed most of it to the Detective, but he had a sense now that he was growing again and that Tris was behind it. 

"I can," he said out loud, draining his coffee for emphasis. "Bring it on."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was aiming for three parts - one each for the POVs of Chloe, Trixie, and Lucifer - but when I got to this one Lucifer wouldn't shut up so I couldn't fit the whole ending in. Hence, one more chapter coming.


End file.
